No abstract

English as a lingua franca, or ELF is a well-known concept referring to English used as a contact language among people from different linguistic backgrounds. ELF users are thus people using English as ELF. This study investigated the ELF user attitudes of pre-service teachers from Spain and Sweden, towards English and its users. From the convergences and divergences of their attitudes, it emerged that the ELF user attitudes of the two European student cohorts tended to be ambivalent, mixed, and self-contradictory. After discussing factors for participants’ attitudinal tendencies, we conclude that the ambivalence in their overall attitudes seem to mirror the ambivalence of the ‘double’ definitions of English in policy documents, which are largely incompatible in setting the goals of teaching and learning the language. We suggest that university teaching help pre-service teachers experience real-life use of English and critically engage with policy documents for future teaching practices.